Can You Hear 1180 Radio Marti?

It's weird. On my Maps on a Mac Pro, you can see the tower shadows plain as day, and the transmitter and tuning buildings, but not the towers. Is there some kind of cloaking? I've seen it on other towers. You could see the towers on others, but the antenna bays look like they are wrapped in a clear plastic bag. Even some ham antennas and home TV and FM receiving antennas look wrapped.

Maybe 1180 had fewer towers and or bigger side lobes and a wider main lobe before it was 100 kW.

I just looked it up on Google Maps and the towers are clearly seen.

Maybe it depends on the time of day and the angle of the sun. The Google maps show the shadow in a different direction. Still doesn't explain the plastic bags over the antenna bays on transmitting FM and TV towers, and even receiving TV antennas.

The Google Earth version I have dates the imagery to 12/31/2017, and the towers are there, "leaning" west, while the tower shadows are NNE. There's also a satellite dish (and shadow) visible.

Tower shots are tricky. I looked at Chicago area stations, and WGN, WSCR and the old WBBM are still there, and in 3D. You can fly around them. But the WLS tower is there only in part. The red sections are missing completely and only part of two white sections are there. Even less of the backup tower is there. Go figure.

Schroedingers Cat said:

Maybe it depends on the time of day and the angle of the sun. The Google maps show the shadow in a different direction. Still doesn't explain the plastic bags over the antenna bays on transmitting FM and TV towers, and even receiving TV antennas.

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Never heard Marti here, but I've looked at plenty of tower sites via Google Earth. I agree that Google does leave some interesting artifacts on the imagery. The "Veiwability" of towers seems to have more to do with the angle at which the image was captured (Some images taken when the satellite was directly overhead or nearly so can't be seen as well), and the time of day as others have mentioned. Ive noticed oftentimes the shadow cast by the tower can be seen more clearly than the tower itself.

I can sometimes hear R. Rebelde underneath WHAM. It doesn't help matters that WHAM is reasonably strong here at my Chicago area location. I've never heard R. Marti here....at least not that I could identify.

Schroedingers Cat said:

Why is it that you can see the shadows of the Radio Marti towers on satellite photos but not the towers? Anyone can figure out where it is, so what's the big secret?

I remember that the Cubans started Radio Free Dixie aimed at African Americans in the South at Night, as a response to Radio Marti, but John R et. al. and WLAC's far better programing made it irrelevant.

John Richbourg, WLAC Nashville. Nothing like you pictured.

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Radio Free Dixie operated from 1960-1964; Radio Marti began in 1983..

Mediafrog+ said:

The Voice of America Spanish language service was transmitted out of Marathon on 1180 in the decades prior to Marti hitting the air, using 50kw.

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Correct. An interesting trivia point about that VOA Spanish service feed to Marathon is that the audio was on the Washington to Greenville microwave system and then from Greenville VOA Site C to Marathon on a 5 kHz telco circuit.

Looks like RFD operated using the CMCA 730 transmitter with 10000 watts. The playlists I found in the above link have almost nothing that the African American listener would want to listen to. And compared to WLAC at Night, no comparison at all. One thing, at least, that all the Caucasian listeners mentioned listening to WLAC for, were lesser known James Brown songs, often ignored by local Top 40 radio, especially in small towns where the Top 40s signed off or went to 250 watts Class IV. James Brown was very patriotic, and was invited to the White House on a number of occasions. The opposite of RFD.

I had Marti in a fluke once in Ohio but it was in the early 80s and it could have still been using the old VOA pattern.

Schroedingers Cat said:

Looks like RFD operated using the CMCA 730 transmitter with 10000 watts. The playlists I found in the above link have almost nothing that the African American listener would want to listen to. And compared to WLAC at Night, no comparison at all

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The article indicates RFD later went to a 50kW Radio Progreso transmitter (640?). It almost sounds like the Civil Rights leader and the Cuban government worked out some kind of quasi-brokerage deal.

cyberdad said:

I've been through Marathon Key exactly twice. Once on the way to Key West. Once on the way back to the Florida mainland. I looked everywhere I could for those towers, but never saw them. Which surprised me, because Marathon is not exactly large place. Perhaps the towers are "hidden" so as to help to deter any attempts at sabotage.

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My wife and I had a vacation in the Keys a few years ago. Spent a couple of nights in Islamorada, and one of those days we went looking for a decent public beach to hang out for a few hours. We wound up at Sombrero Beach on Marathon.

Looking north from the beach, there was a four-tower array visible between the palm trees and houses. I suspected it was Marti, and so it was. The towers are relatively short, and the site is too far from US-1 to be easily visible while driving through Marathon on the highway.

On vfrmap.com, they show a single icon tower in that vicinity that is 348 feet, 150 degrees at 1180 kHz. MTH is the airport code for the Marathon Airport. The other nearby station is around 1300 kHz, but its tower was hit by a sailboat mast and it has been on silent STA for a few years. Don't know if the Radio Marti towers are registered with the FAA.

Schroedingers Cat said:

On vfrmap.com, they show a single icon tower in that vicinity that is 348 feet, 150 degrees at 1180 kHz. MTH is the airport code for the Marathon Airport. The other nearby station is around 1300 kHz, but its tower was hit by a sailboat mast and it has been on silent STA for a few years. Don't know if the Radio Marti towers are registered with the FAA.

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That 348 foot tower appears to be at the location of WGMX-FM, ASRN 1037656.

It does not appear that the towers for Radio Marti are on the aviation chart.

By the same token, the towers at VOA Greenville Site B do appear on the VFR charts.

RadioFan2J3 said:

An interesting trivia point about that VOA Spanish service feed to Marathon is that the audio was on the Washington to Greenville microwave system and then from Greenville VOA Site C to Marathon on a 5 kHz telco circuit.

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That audio quality is what I remember from hearing VOA on 1180 half a century ago.

Greenville site "C" was basically a master control operation, taking program feeds from Washington D.C. and other locations, and distributing them to the "A" and "B" sites as well as other VOA facilities. The "C" site was made obsolete by satellite technology and shut down many years ago.

Interestingly, the old VOA transmitter site in Bethany, Ohio (closed in 1994) apparently provided better shortwave reception in Cuba due to the combination of distance and skywave skip angles. The Greenville site worked better deeper into the Caribbean and Latin America. There may have been changes in the antenna systems at Greenville site "B" to steepen the RF "takeoff angle" to alleviate that issue...?

Prior to its closure in 2007, the Delano, California transmitter site was also used for Radio Marti. Here in Houston the RM programming would come blasting in as we were in the direct path from Delano to Cuba. IIRC Delano was sometimes used for Kreyol broadcasts to Haiti using the same beam.

Mediafrog+ said:

That audio quality is what I remember from hearing VOA on 1180 half a century ago.

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The first attempt at the satellite program distribution used a multiplex system made by some outfit call Avanti. While it was better than the telco and microwave systems, the audio bandwidth of each channel was only up to about 8 kHz. That was certainly enough for the shortwave and medium wave transmitters, but wasn't quite what was desired to feed FM transmitters.

For some reason, I am thinking there was at least one other multiplex system used between the Avanti equipment and the Comstream units, but then even the Comstream decoders were replaced with Scientific Atlanta (now Cisco) PowerVu equipment.

MarioMania's question about jammers in another thread made me wonder. Has anyone here ever been in the Straits of Florida between Marathon Key and Havana and heard the two signals on 1180 going head-to-head? I wonder how far south Marti's signal can go before it begins to take co-channel interference from the 1180 jammer in Cuba.
Certainly the two going at it is audible from the Key West SDR, but I was wondering about more of a direct line between the two transmitters.

schmave said:

MarioMania's question about jammers in another thread made me wonder. Has anyone here ever been in the Straits of Florida between Marathon Key and Havana and heard the two signals on 1180 going head-to-head? I wonder how far south Marti's signal can go before it begins to take co-channel interference from the 1180 jammer in Cuba.

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As I have mentioned before, Cuba is a little over 800 miles wide. That is a bit more than the distance between New York City and Chicago. Or from LA to Salem, Oregon. The Cubans have, per the 2021 WRTVH, over a dozen stations on 710.

schmave said:

Certainly the two going at it is audible from the Key West SDR, but I was wondering about more of a direct line between the two transmitters.

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There is going to be a different amount of interference depending on where in Cuba a potential listener is.

DavidEduardo said:

As I have mentioned before, Cuba is a little over 800 miles wide. That is a bit more than the distance between New York City and Chicago. Or from LA to Salem, Oregon. The Cubans have, per the 2021 WRTVH, over a dozen stations on 710.

There is going to be a different amount of interference depending on where in Cuba a potential listener is.

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MWList shows 31 stations on 1180 in Cuba with one more planned. Remember they carry regular programming.

On the Key West SDR, I got 2 Stations Mixing in at 2:45pm PST

Radio Marti & a Station was playing ABBA